Guns May Soon Be Everywhere in Georgia — Soon gun owners in the state of Georgia may be allowed to pack heat almost anywhere—including K-12 schools, bars, churches, government buildings, and airports. The “Safe Carry Protection Act” (HB 875) would also expand Georgia’s Stand Your Ground statute, the controversial law made famous by the Trayvon Martin killing, which allows armed citizens to defend themselves with deadly force if they believe they are faced with serious physical harm. What could possibly go wrong!?

Republican Family Values — A missive from the Oregon GOP. The Republican Party is proud to be known as the party of liberty. As the party of freedom, we believe that Americans should be free to live their lives as they wish, so long as they do not impede the freedom of others to do so. Therefore they support a gay marriage ban. This doesn’t pass the logic level of a fourth-grade class debate, let alone rise to the basic standards of American citizenship. Conservatives…

The Triumph Of Arrant Bullshit On The Affordable Care Act — {T]his quote is immeasurably tragic. It represents a kind of final victory for mean-spirited and uncharitable propaganda over reality, a triumph for misinformation, sabotage, and arrant bullshit in the service of a cruel ideology and faceless oligarchy.

[cancer] NIH Day Seven

I am now in my seventh day here. (Eighth? Not sure where the count begins.) I’m still a bit addled from the Cyclophosphamide dosages over the weekend. (Just typing the name makes me feel ill, via the mighty power of suggestion. And I am still retching horribly from time to time.) But it’s pulling together. I had a good night’s sleep, albeit somewhat interrupted. Today through Friday they;re dosing me with Fludarabine, which is considerably less ugly. Friday or Saturday I start IL-2, which will probably be the toughest med I’ll ever encounter. I am more than a little afraid. In fact, I am very afraid.

I’ve made some observations here, which I offer in no particular order except that the one with the somewhat triggery and gross medical photograph will be under a cut at the end,

Toilets in the patient rooms

Whatever healthcare architect specified the toilets in the patient rooms here had obviously never used one. They’re the kind that stick out from the wall, and oval of the seat is longer that the usual American toilet design. And they have a very high waterline. Like so:

Note the red line. Think about it for a minute. Lisa Costello says when she uses the one in the visitor bathroom, she often gives herself a finger bath whilst cleaning. Me, I dangle. As most men due to some degree. Little Elvis is of a felicitous size and shape, but my cremasteric reflex is in good working order, so he’s usually safe. However, my testicles drop right into the soup every time.

I’m sure I don’t have to draw you (another) picture. Let’s just say my management strategies for this are annoyingly kindergarten-like, as I’m not normally in the habit of clutching my junk while I poop.

Why in the hell anyone thought this was a good design, I cannot imagine.

How best to pee in a handheld urinal (if you’re me)

I have discovered that the best way for me to pee in one of those little plastic urinals is to lean my forehand against the bathroom wall, tilting my weight forward, and use my two hands as God intended them to be used in that situation. I have no idea why this should be true.

Hot water? In a hospital? What hot water?

As long as we’re on the subject of plumbing design in a healthcare facility, the hot water at the tap is very, very slow. If it hasn’t been used for a while, I’m talking two-rounds-of-Happy-Birthday slow. I understand instant-on hot water isn’t practical from an energy efficiency point of view, but maybe they could have put a few more boilers in the architecture. I mean, it’s not like I have any reasons to need to keep washing my hands a lot.

The saga of my hospital bed

Oh, the bed. It’s a perfectly good bed. All the mechanical bits work just fine. Up, down, et cetera. But the light controls and nurse call built into the flip-up side panels did not. I asked about this on checking in. “Just use the remote”, I was told. The remote, btw, provides no visual feedback such as an orange light or something when you press the nurse call. I pointed out this was a significant safety hazard, because if I awoke confused or seizing or something, the side panel nurse call was much more obvious and easy to reach, and I might night be able to hunt for the remote. A non-functioning emergency call button is a hazard, period. “Loop the remote around the side rail.”

I’m sure Risk Management would love to hear all that.

So we kept asking. And asking. Nurses, doctors, maintenance guys, the ward administrator. The problem, it quickly devolved, was the bed’s data output cable had a head that was incompatible with the data input on the utility wall behind the bed. We asked for another bed. No.

The problem with being in a hospital is that if you’re trying to accomplish something that doesn’t flow up through your nurse to your doctor, that’s very hard to do. Administration, infrastructure, physical plant and so forth are deliberately invisible to the patients.

Finally a guy came in to change our clock battery for DST. He was a hospital electrician. We asked him about the bed. No, not his job, but he knew who’s job it was. Meanwhile, I think the ward admin had finally gotten hold of someone. (Bed services apparently not being available over the weekend.) The bed mechanic showed up in due course, agreed with our diagnosis, and said he’d fix it. He came back half an hour later with a cart full of tools and equipment and tore apart the utility wall to swap out the bed data interface.

All ended well. But we must have asked literally fifteen people. It was just weird.

My footlight

Speaking of physical plant, there’s a small footlight in my room next to the bathroom door. I suppose it’s intended for night use. It’s inside the wall, and provides a corresponding glow on the other side. Except the filter or whatever on my side has slipped. So when I turn the footlight on, it shines directly in my eyes in bed with an unmediated glow of a bulb. I have asked to have this fixed as many times as I’ve asked for the bed to be fixed, but we haven’t yet found the vice-president of footlights at NIH, apparently.

Little roly-poly bits on the floor

I am attended by two nurses per day on 12-hour shifts. The odd medical assistant wanders through to do vitals. Episodically doctors appear like Canadian trap door alligators. And they leave behind a trail of syringe caps and similar small plastic items on the floor. I find this an astonishing fall hazard, as small round things may as well be ball bearings if you hit them at just the appropriate angle. Another item for Risk Management I guess.

Using the incentive spirometer to bring down a fever

One of my least favorite medical devices in the incentive spirometer. They feature prominently in post-operative recovery regimes.

I have learned a new use for them which surprised me considerably. If I measure a low to moderate fever, the nurses here will sometimes have me use the incentive spirometer for several minutes. It can bring my temperature down by a degree Centigrade or more. Weird.

The fifteen-minute Tylenol

Yesterday, NIH implemented a new medication management system. Literally every pill or dosage has to be scanned before it can go into me. This has obvious applications for both patient care and inventory control. It’s also, like all new release software, buggy and strange.

Last night, my nurse was trying to give me 650 mg of Tylenol. For some reason, my orders were written as two separate 325 mg doses. This resulted in fifteen minutes of exasperated effort on her part, and that of another nurse, before they just gave me the damn Tylenol and went off to work this out somewhere else. Given that I was on the edge of falling asleep at the time, and really wanted the Tylenol so I could go lights out, this was frustrating as all get out. Ah, progress.

My inoperative lungs

The bottom third of my lungs are silent now. I no longer have use of them. The tumors have crowded out the healthy tissue and blocked air access. So when a doctor or nurse listens to my lungs, they sometimes comment on this. I am always on the edge of short of breath, and find this somewhere between creepy and terrifying.

Inputs are fine. They can pump stuff down all day long. And if they’re pumping down, they can extract. But right now I’m only on the infuser about 30 minutes per day. And after a while, output shuts down. No blood draws. Apparently I either have excellent clotting factors, or the lines are twisted in my chest and pinching one another. The horrible, whole-body spasms I’ve been having with the wrenching and coughing can’t be helping that either. Right now I’m waiting out a TPA push to see if that clears. Otherwise I’m afraid they’re going to put me on KVO (Keep Vein Open) orders with a continuous drip. My real terror here is that they’ll decide to take this out and put another one in.

Teens taunted by bullies are more likely to consider, attempt suicide — This just in: water is wet. I know the point of stories like this is that quantifiable study results can prompt official action, but as long-time victim of childhood bullying who had a lot of suicidal ideation and one semi-serious attempt, I have ask why anyone in authority over children needs to wait for academic approval?

Oh Lordy – on the forthcoming Christian film Persecution — Basically, this is a movie in which it’s overtly asserted that in order for Christians to be “free” the government cannot endorse the idea of fairness to all religions. Indeed, it seems that liberty has now been interpreted as a requirement to officially acknowledge that America is a Christian Nation and must adhere to Christian precepts.

When an Undue Burden? — What if gun laws were written like abortion laws? Would those Constitution-loving conservatives embrace the intent of the Founders the same way? (Via Scrivener’s Error.)

Journalists should stop ‘balancing’ stories with Science Denialists: Cosmos’s Neil DeGrasse Tyson — Either that or go all the way. Every time a story runs about a weather satellite, a Flat Earth denialist should get equal time. It would be precisely as intellectually credible as evolution denial and climate denial, as the Bible clearly states that the Earth has four corners, and would help those elements in our culture hell bent on destroying any public understanding of science to further their political ends.

The Uses and Abuses of Reagan — One of Bush’s flaws is that he governed as more of a hard-line ideologue than Reagan ever pretended to be, and another is that he claimed to be an internationalist while making a mockery of America’s reputation in the world. Republicans should not be deluded into thinking that they are obliged to follow Bush’s example in order to honor Reagan, but neither should they feel compelled to respond to contemporary events as if nothing had changed in the last thirty years. Confidential to GOP in America: Want another Reagan? Elect another senile old fraud who projects a strong Daddy image. It worked for you last time.

[cancer] NIH Day Six

It’s Monday morning here at scenic NIH. I haven’t eaten anything since Friday afternoon but two soda crackers, of which I thrwe up. My dreams have been filled with strange chowder, including the realization that I own a Black Knight pinball machine. In point of fact, I do not, though I’ve long coveted them. They’re spendy to buy and spendy to maintain and where would I put one anyway?

They started me Friday afternoon on Cyclophosphamide as my first stage chemo agent. My mind and body both went to tell. Since then the longest stretch of sleep I’ve had is about three hours, and my total across three nights is ridiculously low. Plus all the usual stuff like diarrhea and vomiting. Uncontrollable in my case, which is unusual. Plus some unusual (for me at least) stuff like all 32 of my teeth aching at once, and my face browning hot to the touch.

I’ve run a series of low grade fevers. The chest port they put it keeps clogging. One of my nurses believes the lines are twisted inside of mu chest. Some of the vomiting was so severe that afterwards my forearms ached for an hour so, something I’ve never experienced. Dad, tillyjane (a/k/a my mom) and Lisa Costello have been magnificent.

I have been magnificently miserable.

Things are a bit better today. The chemo I’m on until Friday, the name of which escapes my right now, is much more narrowly targeted and shouldn’t leave me feeling so oppressed. I need to lose the Cyclophosphamide-induced gag reflex before I resume eating, but hopefully that will be today.

When I start the IL-2 on Friday or Saturday in order to supplement the TIL cell infusion, I’ve been told to expect a weight gain of 20-30 pounds in less than a handful of days. It can do weird things to your metabolism. I’m also told I’ll lose that weight before they discharge me, presumably by pissing it away, but wow… That also puts me in mind of ascites, which I expect to be a feature of my terminal decline.

Meanwhile, I suffer for science. Please excuse any weird mistakes in this blog post, my brain is not fully back on line yet.

Report: How GOP lost young voters — “In the short term, the party ought to promote the diversity of thought within its ranks and make clear that we welcome healthy debate on the policy topic at hand.” Why in the hell are you a Republican if you believe diversity of thought and healthy debate are actually good ideas? Or have you never heard any single GOP political or media figure speak, ever? And you’ve obviously never read any GOP party platform.

The Catholic conundrum named Francis — Now we have a relatively new pope who has expressed the heretical (to conservatives) notion that unfettered capitalism is not a guarantor of freedom, prosperity, or human dignity. He’s even suggested economic inequality is a more important concern for the church, and humanity, than condemning gay people or women who use contraception. Kind of like how Jesus talked a lot about the poor, and not so much about the gay menace. Huh. Who knew? Judging by their words and deeds, certainly not the Catholic church in the America, or the American Evangelical community, nor a lot of other denominations.

Surrender Douthat! — On the conservative Christian trope that an incremental loss of privilege from absolute cultural supremacy to merely overwhelming dominance counts as persecution, especially in the area of marriage equality. I’ve often wondered whether, as gays and gay marriage become more mainstream and, well, banal, many Christians won’t find themselves wondering why the apocalypse hasn’t come after all and what that says about Scriptural authority in a lot of other areas. That’s what’s not sitting well with a lot of Christian culture warriors right now.

[culture] Further notes on the social invisibility of illness and disability

Yesterday I flew across the country wearing a face mask. This is something I’ve done several times of late. The resulting interactions are fascinating.

I’ve written before about social invisibility and mobility. Being on a scooter makes me socially invisible in a way that as a white man I’d never really experienced before. It was something between amusing and annoying, though mostly annoying.

Carrying a cane creates a more sympathetic response. Unlike the scooter, where people seem to assume I have a serious cognitive deficit, the cane (mostly) elicits courtesy at doorways and in lines and direct interactions from people.

I think the difference between the two is height. Even with the cane, my face is in an adult male position with respect to others. On a scooter, I am below the line of sight of everyone except children and people of very small stature.

But the mask… The mask creeps people out. It will come as a surprise to no one who knows me that I make a lot of eye contact with other people, especially women. When I’m wearing the mask, I encounter avoidance behaviors on a massive scale, that I rarely if ever encounter without the mask. It’s as if I’ve become creepy stalker guy. Men avoid me, but in somewhat different ways, as if I am embarrassing to them.

In other words, a lot like being back in high school.

I assume there’s a fear, spoken or unspoken, that as I am wearing a mask, there’s a chance of catching something horrible from me. It’s a marker of illness, a banner of disease. It generates not so much social invisibility as borderline pariah status. The reality in my case is that I’m trying not to catch something from the people around me, but they have no way to know that.

So, in simple terms, this is my experience of how I’ve been perceived and treated:

Scooter: Invisible and cognitively compromised
Cane: Visible and even treated with respect
Face Mask: I am the Walking Dead and I will eat your brains

LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy — In Switzerland, the first controlled trial of the drug in more than 40 years found that it eased anxiety in people nearing the end of their lives. Personally, given what’s inside my head these days, I’d be very concerned about a bad trip. (Via David Goldman.)

And we will prove them herewith… — My friend ericjamesstone with a Mormon perspective on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Since he’s primarily talking about his interpretation of Mormon doctrine, it doesn’t matter what my opinion is. I’m not a LDS member. But I’m glad he wrote this, regardless of my disagreements. Where I engage those disagreements is when doctrine leaves the church, any church, and enters the statehouse in an attempt to coerce non-believers according to church rules. Within their house of worship, according to our Constitution, people are free to believe anything they want. My opinions do not apply there.

The Real Welfare Queens — A new report shows corporations like Koch Industries have gotten billions in government subsidies. It’s not welfare if you give government money to rich people who don’t need it.

It’s not a messaging problem — Isn’t it time for people to recognize that this isn’t a problem with the GOP “message?” It’s a problem with conservative philosophy. Also, this just in: sun rises in east.

McConnell Vows a Senate in Working Order, if He Is Given Control — “We are going to treat senators with respect — we are going to work harder and accomplish more,” said Mr. McConnell. Sure thing, Mitch. Given the behavior of the GOP majority in the house, and the Senate during prior periods of GOP majority, does anyone believe this crap besides the low information crowd watching FOX News and voting Republican? Plus, note the glaring hypocrisy on the question of the Senate filibuster, which was the worst Constitutional evil EVAR when Democrats changed it according to McConnell, but is a reasonable tactic for Republicans to keep on the table according to McConnell.

Settled Science — 1 in 4 Americans isn’t down with heliocentricity. Because science is a cult, man. Where the priesthood of knowledge doesn’t permit alternative views. Your opinion is just as valid as some longhair Ph.D. who’s spent decades in research. Right?

5 years later, here’s how the tea party changed politics — For better or worse, the coming together of frustrated conservatives fearing American ruin due to rising debt has altered the national discussion to raise the profile of people and policies previously relegated to the right-wing fringe. That’s an awfully kind description of a political movement far better characterized by its arrant racism and proud, willful ignorance. Because really, if these people were motivated by deficit issues, where the hell were they when a white conservative named George W. Bush held office and ran up the highest deficits in history? They didn’t get mad until there was a black Democrat to blame. A GOP astroturf operations from the beginning, the Tea Party has never had a shred of intellectual or political credibility except as gifted to them by Your Liberal Media.